


In Another Lifetime

by little_calico



Category: Guilt Pleasure - Works
Genre: Doll/PnG Prequel, Other, Pete Backstory
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-12
Updated: 2016-07-23
Packaged: 2018-07-23 13:26:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Underage
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7465119
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/little_calico/pseuds/little_calico
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set 5 months after "Deviations, Waivers and Exceptions".  Preferable if you have PnG ad DWE already read in the background.</p><p>Pete had gone missing without a trace; his everything left behind.  Vincent returned to NY, discarding an existing assignment, to track down the kid himself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

 

_Long Island, New York_

 

                I was sitting at a table on the floating deck of a high-end seafood restaurant in Port Jefferson on a nice sunny day with Tony and Leon.  The place was a converted ship, spanning three decks, with half of it overlooking the water.  There wasn’t much to look at except for a small armada of white yachts swaying and bobbing on the choppy surface.  Seagulls screeched and circled overhead, matching the noise of tourists with screaming children all around us.  For Tony, it was chamber music.  Leon Harris didn’t attempt to hide his utter disdain and annoyance.  I was watching someone’s teacup Yorkie wearing a collar with pink rhinestones, wandering around the deck oblivious to the busy foot traffic.

                We were sharing two pitchers of beer, surrounded by a mix of cute or expensive people nibbling on salads as they sipped pastel colored drinks.  In t-shirts and jeans, we were an odd sight among them.  Tony was a monster between the two of us, his arms easily the size of my thighs.  In the chrome, straight back chair, he looked like an adult stuck in a kindergartner's seat.  Leon was a smaller man – barely one fifty and thin-framed.  Although he wasn’t even forty yet, his hair had gone white.  He'd grown it long and tied it into a pony tail.  He wore a loose white cotton shirt with red flowers over denim Capri pants and rubber flip-flops.  He was local, living two townships away.

                “You think the kid just decided to go back?” Tony asked.

                I shook my head, although I had no basis for my belief.  I had passed on an impending assignment to Ecuador the day before Tony called me to tell me Pete was gone.  Though I had left him with Tony five months ago, Leon was the one who physically checked on Pete once a week.  When he took the train to visit him three days ago, the apartment I'd provided for him was empty.  A call to the school confirmed that Pete hadn’t been to classes in a week.

                “He wouldn’t leave everything behind,” I said.

                We were quiet again; our silence was filled with the excited screams of kids, barking dogs and the shrieks of seagulls.

                “Where should we start?” Tony asked.  In two long swallows he drained the tall glass of beer he'd just poured, and refilled it. 

                “I’ll take care of it,” I said.  “Could be just a case where someone spooked him and he’s hiding out.  His stepfather has money and has probably hired a few PIs to look for him.  One of them might have gotten too close and he just took off.”

                “Which doesn’t say where he could have gone.”

                Leon only nodded.  He'd said almost nothing since we sat down.  He didn’t know me, although he understood Tony had hired him to watch over Pete for me.  I wasn’t certain why he was there, except to hand me a spare key to my own apartment.  Tony had told me that Leon was a retired tech guy he used to work with.  Pete was a favor.  I believed it.  Pete had only mentioned Leon once and called him "Grandpa" in the same sentence.

                “I’ll take care of it,” I said again.  “For now, it’s just a matter of sniffing out leads.  I’ll call in a favor in NYPD to find out what Pete’s real name is.”

                Leon pulled himself up straighter in his seat.  “You mean 'Peter Kinnear' is not his real name?”

                “It could be, but I suspect not.  I doubt 'Pete' is even his real name.”

                “He had ID cards and…whatever….”

                “The kid’s a genius hacker; he knows where to buy fake IDs,” I said.  “He was running away from a lot of things when I first picked him up.  I doubt he would've given me his real name; he didn’t know if I'd end up being someone else he’d have to run away from.”

                I finished my beer and shook my head when Tony picked up the almost-empty pitcher to refill my glass.  I wanted to smoke, but there were at least four signs forbidding it. 

                “What do you want me to do?” Tony asked. 

                “Go back to Virginia for now.  Not like there’s a lot that can be done until some leads turn up.  He might go back there, if somehow he gets that far.  Besides the place in Manhattan, your place’s the only other one he knows where he'd feel safe.”

                “All right,” Tony said, looking down at the Yorkie that had come up to sniff his work boots.  It quickly lost interest and spirited away, its little legs carrying it through a patio door a waitress slid open just then.

                “You make sure you tell me who to hurt for scaring Pete off like that,” he said, as I pushed back my chair to get up. 

                “I’ll save at least an arm or a leg for you to break,” I said.  I nodded at Leon, who nodded back, and left.

 

*********

 

**He'd been crying.  He couldn’t help it, and he hated that he couldn’t.  The man in the front seat had told him he’d be "home" in a few days.  They'd been driving for almost a day.  For six days before that, he'd been penned up in an empty apartment with just an air mattress and an olive drab green wool blanket that said “U.S. Army” on it.  He was given bottled water and fed canned cold pasta in disposable plastic bowls.**

**Although he'd been allowed to use the toilet alone, the man had watched him through the glass sliding door when he showered.  He wore the same clothes.  The man had bought underwear for him from a local store, two packets of five, neatly folded with a picture of a smiling young man posing on each cover.  The man had handed them to him in a plastic grocery bag from the store, that had a New Jersey phone number below a large owl logo.  At least he knew where he was.**

**He'd heard the man speak to someone on the phone, almost angrily sometimes, as he paced the empty length of the living room.  He couldn’t hear the words clearly through the locked door, but he could hear the man's tone.  Sometimes he cursed loud enough for him to hear it clearly.  One time, the man came in only to snap a picture of him with a camera phone and left again.**

**Early in the morning one day, the man suddenly shoved whatever was left in the apartment into two black trash bags.  Pete made himself small in the corner of the room, frightened by the sudden flurry of activity he didn’t understand.  The man ignored him.  He deflated the air mattress, rolled it up and stuffed it into one of the bags, then he left the apartment.  Pete wandered around the empty living room, looking out the windows.**

**There were three other buildings that looked like theirs – red brick and stucco, a few trees as decoration planted in neat boxes a few yards apart.  Cars parked next to the curb were old, none of them expensive.  Their apartment was high up – maybe on the tenth floor.  The windows could only be opened a fraction.**

**Pete tried the front door.  It was locked.  The man had thought to install a double-lock, perhaps an electronic one.   If Pete had managed to slip out of his room, he would still have been locked inside the apartment.  He thought now to open the window and shout out to someone, but he could already hear the man’s heavy footsteps coming back up the stairs.  He dashed into his room and crouched in the corner.  He was becoming scared again.**

**When the man came back into the apartment, Pete followed his progress by his footsteps, until his figure filled the doorway.  There was half a bottle of orange juice in his hand.**

**“It’s time to go,” the man said, gesturing for Pete to get up.**

**Pete shook his head and shrank even smaller into the corner of the bare room.  The man merely looked annoyed and walked over to him.  He crouched down and offered the plastic bottle of juice to him.**

**“Be a good boy and drink,” the man said, holding out the bottle that was still cold.  Pete could see droplets of condensation sliding down the sides.**

**“Please let me go home…,” Pete said, his voice small and broken.  He was trying hard not to cry.  He flinched when the man reached out and raked his fingers through his hair, combing it gently.**

**“We _are_ going home,” the man said, his voice soft.  “Be good and drink the juice.”**

**The bottle was shoved into his hands and the cap removed for him.  Pete held it.  He was shaking hard, tears running down his cheeks in rivulets.**

**“Nothing to be scared of,” the man said, as he continued to stroke Pete’s hair.  “Drink it all down and we’ll leave, okay?”**

**Pete brought the bottle up to his mouth, the rim tapping against his teeth.  He squeezed his eyes shut and drank it in one long swallow.  The juice was sweet and sour, chased by something bitter.  It was when he'd finished it and opened his eyes again to look at the emptied bottle, that he saw a white gritty residue in a long trail left inside.  He stared at it until the man took it from him.**

**“It’s something to make you go to sleep,” he said.  “It’ll make the long drive easier for you.”**

**“Why…?”**

**The man only smiled and gave him a quick kiss on his forehead.  “Daddy misses you very much,” he said, standing up.  “Be good and wait here.  It’ll take about twenty minutes for me to finish packing the car.”**

**Pete watched the man leave and the door close.  He heard the lock turn.  Without a window in the room and the nightlight he'd used unplugged and thrown into the trash bag with the air mattress, he was left in the dark.  He started to cry again.  He couldn't hold back all of the collected fear that had been tearing him inside out for days.  It gave him even more anxiety to hear his cries echoing in the empty room – his despair his only companion.**

**He wished he'd told Vincent Lynch the truth about everything.**


	2. Chapter 2

                When I did a stint in London two years ago, I was seeing a woman who held two medical degrees.  She was in a private medical practice with three partners when we met.  She had a psychiatry doctorate as a "back up," as she called it.  She liked to dig at my psyche and I let her.  I didn’t tell her very much, regardless of how well trained she was in mind games.  And so, she hypothesized often on what I didn’t say about my past or about myself.  I found her theories amusing at best.  It was just nice to talk to someone who spoke something besides coded military speak, and smelled pretty as she talked about a handbag with the same kind of excitement one of the guys would after an intense scrimmage.

                Perhaps it was a way for her to scrape away the scratch-off ticket surface and discover what kind of prize I was.  She often found the minutest details worth measuring.  When we were in a small apartment I had bought in Normandy, I told her it was a place I went to when I wanted to be left alone.

                “Before you start to theorize my affinity to Normandy and somehow connect it to D-Day or anything war-like, or to who I am – I bought this place because it's quiet,” I told her.

                “But you're drawn to _this_ place –“

                “I am drawn to a lot of places.  I have places in New York, too.”

                She became animated.  It was as if I had just revealed to her I was a secret prince.

                “They are investments,” I said, before her flurry of theories could begin.  “I like my privacy and a change of scenery.”

                “And the thought of being tethered to one place terrifies you.”

                “You mean like a marriage would.”

                “Nomadic people who choose to be, are often anxious if they become aware they're committed to a single place indefinitely.”

                “I’m very rarely anxious,” I said.

                She laughed and patted me on the cheek.  “That's because you have so many safe houses.  While most people want a routine and stability – going home to one person, one family, and to that one house they’ll grow old and probably die in -- you're the anti-American dream, dear.  The notion of settling down is not only unattractive to you, it terrifies you, doesn’t it?”

                 I hadn’t thought of that aspect of myself in that way until Elizabeth described it. “Like a man who plugs in as many night lights as he can while there’s still daylight out, because he knows the night will come,” I agreed.

                She leaned in and gave me a kiss.  “I finally got you to confess _something_.”

                We stopped dating a month before I left London.  Although she'd understood my contempt for everything usual and familiar – she still wanted it for herself.  She met someone and became engaged two days before I relocated for a new assignment in Vietnam.  I liked her.  I bought her a cup of coffee at the café where we met as a cheap engagement present. 

                I would think of Elizabeth’s words verbatim as she'd said them in her accent, whenever I would visit one of the six properties I’d collected over the years. 

                I recalled them again, as I went into the Tribeca apartment where Pete had been for almost half a year.  It was a quaint two-bedroom loft with a view of the Hudson.  The building was old – built back in 1899, when it was a pharmaceutical manufacturing warehouse.  It had been converted to a ten-story, high-end apartment complex in the late seventies.  I'd bought the unit a day after it listed, from an elderly couple who wanted to move back to Germany.  I rarely stayed there.  I liked the idea of being in the City, but didn’t like the chaos that came with it.  I liked the feeling of having another option, another place that was mine. 

                Most of the apartment had been left as I remembered it.  The furniture was still covered in white linen.  The kitchen was bare, except for a small microwave and half a loaf of white bread.  He'd used only one shelf of the refrigerator.  The freezer was empty.  In the sink were two clear plastic bowls, three plastic forks and a ceramic mug with a drawing of a black cat carrying a red umbrella on it.  He hadn’t used my dishes or pots and pans.  The stove and burners were pristine.

                The apartment had two bedrooms and one and a half baths.  He'd used the bedroom that had the full bath connected to it.  The bathroom only had one towel, a bar of soap, and a bottle of shampoo.  Half a tube of toothpaste with its end rolled up, sat with a blue toothbrush in a cup by the sink.  He didn’t have many clothes, but he'd hung them up in the walk-in closet.  His underwear was folded and piled in a wicker basket.  The desk had a stack of novels he'd borrowed from the library, his school books and spiral notebooks with a small zipper bag with pens in them.  His laptop sat to the side and was still plugged in; the screen was down and snapped closed.  There was a small stuffed rabbit wearing a blue coat sitting on top of it. 

                The place had been barely used.  The kid minimalized himself.  Although I'd expected him to use the apartment as his own, I was pleased that he'd taken only as much as he needed.  He respected my space.  That told me more about who Pete was, than he could ever tell me in words. 

                However, the unsettling sensation that followed bothered me.  He hadn't been snatched from the apartment.  There weren’t any signs of a struggle.   The locks hadn't been tampered with.  Nothing was broken or scattered.  His backpack was gone and so was his cell phone, but he'd left his prized laptop behind.  It looked like he'd just gone out and then decided he wouldn't be coming home.

                Before I left, I did a quick search of the apartment for notes or journals.  Anything that he might have used to leave a message behind.  There weren’t any.  Although I knew his laptop would be locked, I looked into it anyway.  I unlatched the screen, brought it up and woke it from sleep mode.  After a few seconds, a dialog box asking for not one, but two passwords appeared.  I snapped the screen closed.  I went into the kitchen and packed the plates with bread crumbs still stuck to them and the mug into a paper grocery bag.  I left the apartment to change for dinner with my "favor" from One Police Plaza.

******

                I'd met David Krause while I still worked for the government three years ago on a joint task force.  The temporary assignment involved two rival organized crime outfits from Chinatown.  They were leaving bodies indiscriminately and scaring off the tourists.  It caused enough commotion on the news for the governor to pull special favors from the state department.  The three-week operation only managed to run the gangs who had done most of the killings into Pennsylvania where they carried on their spat a few miles outside Penn State.  At least it was no longer affecting tourism in New York.   

                Technically, he didn’t owe me any favors.  He would, after I paid for his dinner at Per Se.

                He was decidedly underdressed.  He'd come straight from the precinct in a wrinkled suit and loosened tie.   He carried his jacket over one arm.  The restaurant had a jacket and tie policy.  He'd left his badge and gun on his hip so the host wouldn’t lecture him about the dress code.  I got there five minutes before he did.

                "Denny’s would've been fine,” David said, slinging his jacket over the empty chair next to him.  “This kind of place makes me uncomfortable.  Why do you have to have a tie and jacket to eat something you're already paying a fortune for? I should have the right to dine naked with the prices they are charging.”

                “People who make good money like something besides a ten dollar steak with fries.”

                “I make good money.”

                “Of course you do,” I said.  “I’ll be paying anyway since I like spoiling my dates.  You like my William Fioravanti? I picked it out just for you.  I think the tie brings out the gentle hints of auburn in my eyes.”

                He gave me a lop-sided grin and held out his hand.  I had to get up to take it.    

                “Unless you are really looking to get laid by impressing me with the meal and your fancy suit,” he said.  “You want a favor from the PD don’t you?”

                “Unless the said lay is a favor in itself.”

                He laughed.  Our waiter came with water in cut crystal glasses and our menus.  He asked if we wanted something else to drink.  David asked for coffee.  I ordered a glass of the house wine.

                “So what do you really want?” David asked, as he flipped through the hardcover menu with tassels dangling off the corners. 

                “I need a name to some prints,” I said, and handed him the brown paper bag that had been on the floor next to my feet.  He looked inside and folded it closed again.

                “Whose are these?”

                “That’s what I’d like to know.”

                “I mean, who is this person to _you_?”

                I told him how I’d met Pete and how he'd ended up living in my apartment, then I told him how he'd disappeared a few days ago.  David listened without interrupting and asked no questions.  He finished his coffee that had been served with my wine in the middle of my story.  The waiter had come by twice to ask us if we were ready to order, and twice he was told “not yet.”

                “Hmm,” David said, when I finished.

                The waiter came back again.  David asked to hear the house special.  He didn’t appear to be listening to the man at all, as he recited the four specials and their sides.

                “The duck will be fine,” I told the waiter and gave him our menus. 

                David was still contemplating what I'd told him, after the waiter was gone.  Then he looked at his empty coffee cup pensively. “I think you might have unrealistic expectations,” he said.  “Unless that fourteen year-old had a record, he won’t be in our database.”

                “I’m aware you only archive arrestees’ prints,” I said.  “I also know the commissioner is very fond of you.  He probably gets off reading your solve-rate record.  He has quite a reach into other departments that collect prints, like the passport office.  I know Pete had one when he was six, from some bizarre story he told me about being stuck in Iceland for two days with his father.”

                One side of David’s mouth drew up.  He started to reply but waited when the waiter came back to serve him a fresh cup of coffee and to take away his empty cup. 

                “So you're just wining and dining me to get into the commissioner’s pants,” he said, taking a careful sip of coffee.

                “More like, I am wining and dining you so _you_ can get into the commissioner’s pants.”

                “This four hundred dollar duck is a rather cheap reach-around,” he said, sighing dramatically.

                “Whoever I need to fuck to get names,” I said with a smile.  “I can’t generate leads until I know who the kid is.”

                “Didn’t think you’d be the type that would care about a runaway,” he said.  “A few things to consider, and I hope you take them to heart.  Say, if he were snatched off the street by a private dick his parents hired – they have the right to do that.  You can’t pry a minor out of their mitts.  They own him until he’s eighteen.  They can have you busted for kidnapping, even if you find the kid and the kid wants to go with you.”

                “I know,” I said.  “I have a bad feeling about this.  I’d feel worse not pursuing it.”

                He nodded, rolling his cup between his palms slowly.  “To be honest, I'd feel the same.”

 

******

 

**The man had removed all of the seats from the back of the van, except for one.  The bucket seat was old and reclined back at a forty-degree angle, but wasn’t comfortable.  He could feel the frame and springs through the thin seat covering.  There were two side windows, but they were so tinted that it made the cab dark.  A sheet of dark plexi-glass divided the seats up front from the rest of the van.  A crudely cut square opening had been carved into it just over the driver’s shoulder, a small square of thin plastic with a single hinge making a door where the man could speak to him when the vehicle was in motion.**

**He'd been terrified when the man had cuffed his ankle to an eyebolt he'd drilled into the floor.  A burst of panic had given him the strength to kick at the guy when he locked the cuff around his bare ankle, bruising the guy's chin and knocking his glasses off.  The man had then slapped him so hard that his vision whited out.  Where he was struck, that side of the face numbed then grew hot.**

**“I don’t want to hurt you,” he'd said, rubbing his chin and sliding his glasses back on.  “I will, if that’s the only thing you understand.”**

**The man took his glasses and shoes, laying them on the passenger side seat.  Pete understood it was just a mean to slow him down, if he managed to slip from the cuff and get out of the van.  Without his glasses, he felt even more vulnerable.  The flutters in his belly worsened.  He would have vomited, if he had eaten the night before.**

**Then they left the neighborhood where he'd been held.  It was a quiet, low-income suburb with uncollected trash piled along the curb and untrimmed lawns overtaken by weeds.  Outside the building where he'd been living, he saw the trash bags the man had stuffed the air mattress and other things into from the apartment, sitting against three plastic trash containers.  He watched the neighborhood go by as he used the heels of his hands to wipe away errant tears that wouldn't stop flowing.**

**He finally fell asleep after a couple of hours, the crushed sleeping pills he had taken finally kicked in, and slept for most of the first day.**

**He woke up just enough to hear the man tell someone, “My son’s sick and I finally got him to fall asleep.  If I walk too far, I’ll wake him.  Can you give me a room on the first floor? We’ll be checking out early anyway.”**

**He stirred, his mind wanting his mouth to work and ask whoever the man was speaking to, to help him.  That was his single thought.  Instead, he made incoherent noises and moved just enough to have the man hold him tighter.**

**“If he wakes, he’ll be up all night,” the man said quickly.  “I’d appreciate it if you could hurry. “**

**“I’m sorry, Sir,” a woman’s voice replied.  “One twenty-two.  First floor.  Good night.  I hope your son feels better.”**

**His eyes flickered half-open.  He could see recessed lighting and a low textured ceiling above him, as he was carried.  He had come to recognize the particular aftershave the man wore.**

**“Please…,” he was finally able to utter, one hand coming up to cling onto the man’s jacket.  “Vincent….”**

**“Shhh –“ he was told.  “Let’s get some good rest.  I know the van’s not comfortable so I’ll let you sleep in a bed tonight, but you have to behave.”**

**He understood the words, but couldn't put together what they meant.  His head rolled against the man’s chest as he slid back into unconsciousness again.**

 

 

              

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> David Krause in this novel is a guest appearance. Think of him as A David Krause instead of THE David Krause. Lynch was to chat up a cop so it might as well be someone I've an idea of how he should sound. So please don't think of this David from ITW canon. Lynch-David's completely from different timeline.


	3. Chapter 3

 

                I'd expected to find Pete relatively quickly.  Rather, my expectation was that he would simply call me in a few days and tell me where he was.  That was what I waited for in my mind, although I knew the call would not come. 

                I left the hotel I was staying at and moved into the apartment the day after I had dinner with David.  I stayed in the second smaller room, although I still had to go through the master bedroom to use the full bath.  I realized the flaw in the floor plan then.  Guests were allowed to use the toilet in the half bath, but had to go home or invade someone’s privacy to take a shower.  I was making plans in my mind to install a second door to the full bath while I drove to a supermarket to stock up on groceries.  The kid only had almond milk, a packet of ham and a family-sized stack of processed cheese in the fridge.   

                After I'd returned and put away the groceries, I made myself a cup of coffee and called Tony to get hold of Leon.  Leon called ten minutes later.

                “Tony said you were a tech guy,” I said.

                “Yeah.”

                “Hack-into-a-computer, kind of tech guy?”

                “No,” he said.  “Comm kind.  Combat Radio.  Landline.”

                “I don’t suppose you know anybody who's the hack-into-a-computer, kind?”

                He was quiet for a moment.  “You want to get into the kid’s laptop?”

                “I think it will generate the leads we need.”

                He was quiet again.  “I think I do.  Though I think it'll probably be hard to get into.”

                “Anything's better than nothing,” I said.  “I’m at the Tribeca apartment.”

                “I’ll call if I get something,” he said and hung up.

                It was one-thirty in the afternoon on a Tuesday.  The school had recorded Pete's absence since a week ago, Monday.  There was a weekend window, also over a week ago, when he could have gone missing.  I looked through his room again.  Inside a small red linen pouch, he kept receipts -- small slips of paper from fast food places, local markets and stores with just the amount paid and a time stamp.  I took them into the dining room, spread them out, and painstakingly began organizing them by time and date.

                It took me an hour and a half to sort over two hundred slips of paper.  While I went through them, a picture of his daily life became clearer to me.  He had a simple routine, with most of the receipts  indicating he went to the same places and made the same purchases.  Although I'd given him a stipend of a hundred a week for food and whatever else he might need -- he could ask for anything extra on the side – he'd spent less than half of what I'd given him.  His phone bill and the apartment bills went to Tony, who paid them for me. 

                The kid lived on sandwiches, going through a loaf of bread a week, easily.  He liked ham and cheese.  A lot of processed cheese.  He ate three to five cans of soup a week.  He liked almond milk and apple juice.  Once a week he treated himself to a set meal at a fast food restaurant.  There were no receipts for new clothing or shoes.  This fourteen year-old was wiser and more frugal than most adults.  I felt a little bad, considering I'd just spent over a thousand dollars on a couple of plates of duck last night.

                I looked at the small stack of his most recent receipts.  One was dated a week ago last Saturday, at 3 PM.  It closed the gap of time a little, he'd had to come home and stick the receipt into the pouch.  And then what…?

                I made myself a second cup of coffee and drank it as I walked around the dining room table, where I had all the receipts laid out.  I was thinking of scenarios and dismissing them as quickly as they came.  I simply didn’t have enough information.  All I could do was speculate wild ass theories until a detail or two omitted them.

                David called me during one mid-lap around the table.  “ 'Ethan Spencer Matthews,' ” he said, as soon as I answered the call.  “He’s actually thirteen.  When you picked him up, he'd just turned.”

                “The boy lives like he’s a wise thirty-year old.”

                There was a pause...then, “We should talk,” he said. 

                “You sound like either you're going to tell me you're pregnant, or we're breaking up.”

                “That’s about right.  The more I’m digging up on this kid, the more… some things are…looking bad,” he said.  “My guy is still fishing for more information for me, but I should have enough for you to go on tonight.”

                “I’m staying where I stashed the kid,” I told him, and gave him the address.

                “I won’t get done until after nine.  You’d better feed me.”

                “I will even meet you at the door with something comfortable already slipped on.”

                “Excellent.”

 

                Leon called me when he was a block away.  He said he'd brought someone with him.  I decided not to tell him that I actually expected him to check if I were available before he boarded the LIRR and took the two hour ride into the city, then the subway for twenty minutes and then walked six blocks to the apartment.  I put away the receipts and set the laptop on the dining room table before Leon and his guest arrived.  I didn’t want them in Pete’s bedroom.

                I was contemplating a third cup of coffee when they rang my intercom.  I buzzed them up.  I was still undecided when Leon came to the door with a young man in jeans with rips fashionably placed at his knees and a long sleeved shirt with a picture of a thrash metal band in their murderous clown stage outfits.  He had a black backpack slung over his left shoulder, said his name was “PJ”, and gave me an extremely limp and quick handshake before coming into the apartment and immediately eyeing the laptop on the dining room table.

                “My nephew,” Leon said, shutting the door behind me.  “He’s the only one who's into this kind of stuff that I know.  Had to wait until he got off school before I could bring him here.”

                “Sure,” I said, and walked up to PJ as he was making himself comfortable.

                “A step at a time,” I said.  “I want to know when you're able to get into his laptop.  Then I want to know when you can access his email accounts, if you can.  If there’s a chance he’s set up a kind of kill-switch in the event of a hack, get out as soon as you can without triggering it.”

                PJ shrugged.  “How old is this kid?”

                “Thirteen.”

                Behind me, Leon said, “Jesus Christ, thirteen?”

                PJ grinned and pulled two slim laptops out of his backpack. “An hour or less,” he said. 

                I didn’t ask him for details.  I assumed he meant a thirteen year old couldn’t have enough experience to lock out a hacker a few years older.  I left him to set up and went into the kitchen.  Leon followed me.

                “Coffee? Beer?” I asked him.  He chose beer, and I took two bottles from their paper carrier, giving him one.

                “Thought the kid was fourteen,” Leon said, twisting the top off and pocketing the cap.  “Not that a year makes much difference.”

                “Made a difference in school placement,” I said.  “You ever speak to his teachers or visit the school as his….”

                “Uncle,” he said.  “A couple of times, but it was more like teachers meeting the parents and guardians at an open house.  They never called me for problems.  I looked at a report card he showed me.  The kid’s pretty damn smart.  Not so good in phys-ed, but when you're endowed up here,” he said, tapping his temple with an index finger,  “that’s all the world cares about when you're an adult.”

                “Why didn’t the school call you when he failed to show up for days?” I asked, it suddenly occurring to me that a kid with good grades, who probably never missed a class, who’d been registered with a legal guardian, should have had calls or a paper trail when he stopped going to class for a week. 

                Leon got quiet and drank his beer.  “They just didn’t.  I didn’t think to bitch at the school for that when I came here and found the place empty.”

                “I probably can’t find anyone to talk to about that now,” I said.  “Can you notify the school that I’m coming in to see the principal?”

                He nodded.  “Who should I say you are?”

                “Tell them I’m the father.”

 

                In spite of PJ’s confidence, he wasn't able to hack into Pete’s laptop within the hour.  He couldn’t do it in two hours.  Leon and I finished the six pack of beer in those two hours.  When PJ said he wanted to take the laptop back with him to continue, I told him he couldn’t. 

                “Can I come back tomorrow?” PJ asked, sounding defeated as he slid his own laptops back into his bag.  “I don’t like it when something that should have been easy…isn’t.”

                “I understand,” I said.  “It took me over a year to figure out how to make the blinking '12:00' stop on my stove clock.”

                He wasn’t comforted by my woe.

                “I'm not certain if I'll be here,” I said.  “You can come here only when Leon brings you.  Same rules.  The laptop stays on the dining room table and in this apartment.”

                PJ looked at Leon, who nodded.  “Okay,” he said.

                I gave the apartment key back to Leon.  They left just as the sun finally set.  I had an hour before David was supposed to arrive.  I went out to get a takeout from a nearby Chinese place that Pete had a few receipts for.  I came back in time to find David leaning against the edge of a stone flower box.  He had a leather attaché case on the ground leaning against his leg.  He was twenty minutes early and talking to someone on the phone with a smile on his face.  His voice was gentle and playful.  He only made eye contact with me to acknowledge me.  He didn’t hang up, even after he followed me into the building and into the elevator.

                “Don’t do the laundry,” David said into the phone.  A pause.  “Or clean the kitchen.  Someone comes in once a week to do that stuff for me.”  A pause.  “I know it’s polite to make the place look nice and clean for visitors, but it defeats the purpose of me paying someone to do something that’s already been done.”  Another pause.  “No…no…no…. okay… just the dishes.  I’ve got to go.  Love you.”

                He hung up and looked around the elevator, as if he were suddenly aware he was in one.

                “I knew it,” I said.  “You _are_ breaking up with me.”

                He took the case of beer out of my hand.  “Like you were never fucking around on me.”

                “Someone new? Last time, you were doing all that BDSM shit with a slave chick?”

                He laughed.  The elevator door opened.  He followed me out toward my unit. “This one is a feisty psychiatrist from work,” he said.

                “Shrinks are fun,” I said and gave him an approving nod.

 

                We didn’t bother with plates.  I retrieved two forks and spoons from the kitchen and a roll of paper towels and set them on the dining room table.  He looked at Pete’s laptop that I’d moved to an end table.

                “Trying to get into his business?”

                I shrugged.  “I had someone’s nephew try to get into his business.  He returned home later, a defeated man.”

                I opened each box container and left all of the soy sauce packets, a handful of chopsticks and a small ream of cheap napkins inside one of the bags. 

                David helped himself to one of the beers he’d carried in.  He fetched his briefcase from where he’d left it on the kitchen counter.  After thumbing the combination on it, it opened; he pulled out a gray folder.  “It’s hard to know where to start,” he said, handing it to me.  “Look through this and decide where the pieces fit.”

                He turned on the TV in the living room and watched it while he ate.  I read the paperwork while I ate.  He cycled through all the channels first before settling on a game show that required the contestants to run around in a dark abandoned building to look for prizes.  There was a lot of shrieking.

                The first few sheets of paper that caught my attention and that I read over several times were screen-captures of a missing child poster from San Diego.  Pete’s smiling face, pulled from a school photo, framed the top half of the sheet.  His name was written out below his picture, in red bold letters “Ethan Spencer Kohler”.  The bottom had his bio.   It said Pete was a possible runaway.  He'd been listed as missing two weeks before I met him at the bar in Virginia.  Two hundred thousand dollars were offered for leads by the family.

                “The kid is thirteen,” I said.  “How many aliases does he have?”

                David forked a piece of a halved spring roll and waved it at me.  “'Matthews' is his birth surname.  'Kohler’ is his adopted surname.”

                “Adopted, huh…,” I said. 

                “It’s in there somewhere, but there’s a summary of it from the agency,” he said.  “Father passed away when he was ten.  No known family can be found.  The father had toted the kid around Southern California, shelter to shelter, while he was extremely sick from leukemia.  He died in one of the shelters one night.  He was buried in a Potter’s field and the kid was surrendered to Social Services.”   

                I leaned back in my chair.  I couldn’t understand why Pete hadn't just told me that, instead of inventing another story that wouldn’t benefit him in any way. “That explains all the careful spending,” I said.

                “What?”

                “I give the kid a hundred dollars a week stipend.  He barely spends half of it.  He kept all the receipts and probably stuck to a strict budget.”

                “When you've had nothing all of your life and suddenly have something, the instinct to hoard kicks in.”

                “Maybe,” I said.  “Unless this… Kohler...is stingy, which I don’t think he is…. Pete has a nice, late model laptop and his clothes are name brands, he should've been used to ‘having’.”

                David picked up the box with chicken dumplings and ate out of it.  “Unless he was expecting to run again.”

                “You got anything on Kohler?”

                He shrugged.  “Twice divorced.  Single now.  Fifty-six and very rich.  Owns a dozen resort hotels in Florida and San Diego.  Worth almost a billion, if you believe the newspapers’ estimates.”

                “He wouldn’t have run from that,” I said, “unless what he said about the abuse is true.”

                David exchanged the carton of dumplings for Lo Mein.  After cleaning his palate by downing half a bottle of beer, he started on the noodles.

                “Kohler’s clean, from what I can pull.  Because of his money, he makes the local news when he offloads a wife.  His divorces were less than amicable, but neither woman made any complaints to the cops.  Neither bad mouthed him too severely.  They mostly fought over the alimony.  Both divorces were filed on irreconcilable differences.  The most recent ex went on record to say that Kohler wanted a kid and she didn’t, as the cause of the split.”

“A billionaire wanting an heir is not that unusual.”

                “Yeah,” David said.  “Just his luck to get hitched to two women who didn’t want kids.  He filed the divorces, I’m assuming, for the same reason.  I wouldn’t know.  I didn’t want to deal with family court on the details.  I’ve already annoyed a lot of people in San Diego PD already.  You have any idea how many stories I've had to concoct when the cops there keep asking me why Homicide in New York City is looking for a runaway from San Diego?”

                “I’m rewarding you now aren’t I?” I asked.  “Don't they allow you to eat at work? Christ, you're eating like you have a tapeworm.”

                “Guess who has to skip all his breaks and lunch to fetch information on a kid someone found in a bar parking lot?” On TV, someone screamed.  David laughed.

                “What’s your gut feeling on this?” I asked him.

                He twirled his fork in the Lo Mein and drank some beer. “I think you should go find him,” he said, after a while.  “Read the rest of the paperwork and see how soon you can get to San Diego.  I have a connected cop I can call to help you find and convince some people you should talk to, to talk to you.”

                He paused, leaving his fork standing in the box and drinking the rest of his beer as he looked at me.  “I think something very bad is happening to that kid,” he concluded.

               


	4. Chapter 4

 

It was well after midnight when I finally settled into bed to read the rest of the paperwork.  There were faxes from California Social Services detailing when they took custody of Pete.  The social worker assigned to the case was Leslie Nguyen.  I read her documentation that specified that Pete had been checked by a pediatrician at a local hospital; aside from being malnourished and moderately underweight for his age, he was healthy.  The next day he was transferred to a temporary state licensed foster home, where he stayed for a month before another foster home took him – this time, out of San Diego proper and closer to Los Angeles.  He stayed there for seven months before Kohler filed for a straight adoption.  There weren’t any documented meetings or visits between him and Pete.  Although a usual adoption could take over a year and usually the child stayed with foster parents until the process was completed, Kohler was able to have himself appointed as Pete's foster parent while the paperwork was pending.  Pete officially became a Kohler a month after his eleventh birthday, and the case was closed on that day by the state. 

                Social services records made up most of the paperwork David had stuck into the folder.  The rest included several full color screen captures of news articles dated six weeks ago, and were the point of David’s concern.  Apparently someone had made a ransom demand to Kohler, saying they had Pete and asked for ten million dollars.  A sting was set up, but the supposed kidnapper didn’t show to collect the money at the designated destination.  Kohler went on TV to plead for his son’s return, while apologizing profusely for the police presence.  It remained a local headline for a week.  Pete’s picture, the same one used on the missing posters, was blasted repeatedly until a few national news stations picked it up.  A rich man’s cute little boy gone missing made good fodder for slow news days. 

                I'd been in Europe six weeks ago, and had spoken to Pete at least three times.  He hadn’t given me a reason to think he was in trouble, or creating it.  In theory, he might have come up with the ransom plan to extort money from Kohler and hired someone to execute it; however, the more I thought about it, the less I believed it.  It didn’t make sense for him to cause so much commotion, then skip out on collecting the money, especially when he would then have to vacate a place where he was safe physically, as well as a place where he could exist as the person that it had taken him months or even years to create.

                Before I went to sleep, I used my phone to book a flight to San Diego for that afternoon.

 

                I'd known nothing about what kind of public school Pete should go to.  It wasn’t something I'd ever had an interest in learning.  I was willing to send him to an expensive private school, which Manhattan had an abundance of, but Pete had resolutely refused to go.  He had a low opinion of people with silver spoons stuck in their mouths, he told me; he would end up being tainted by them if he were forced into a uniform and a routine.  I left the decision of picking his high school to Tony, since he had six kids and understood what a "good school" meant. 

                I went to Baruch College Campus High School at eight in the morning.  The principal was a middle-aged woman in a white turtleneck and a brown floral skirt that came down past her knees.  She was wearing a pair of brown suede boots that came up high enough to leave a couple of inches of gap between the hem of her skirt and the top of her boots.  She didn’t introduce herself.  I caught her name when I was sitting in her office and she called Leon to ask him what I looked like.  After listening to Leon’s description, she thanked him and hung up.

                “I apologize if this inconvenienced you,” Dr. Ginsburg said.  “I had to make sure.  We may be talking about privileged information.”

                “Of course.”

                “Peter doesn’t share your last name?”

                “I literally learned about him five months ago,” I said.  “'Kinnear' is his mother’s last name.”

                She raised an eyebrow.

                “His mother passed.  I wasn’t aware of my parenthood until her family contacted me.  I’m out of the country for work most of the year, so Leon watches over him.”

                She looked like she wasn’t entirely convinced, but I didn’t really care about selling her a flawless story.  “I'm here to ask why no one called Leon when Peter missed school for over a week.”

                “I’m not understanding your question,” she said, holding up a finger for me to wait while she picked up her phone.  She called someone named Bernice and asked her to bring in the attendance records and said Pete’s name.  After she hung up, she asked me if I wanted any coffee.  I said I didn’t.  She picked up the phone again and called someone named Michael to bring her coffee.

                “You seemed to be very young to be Peter’s father,” she said. 

                “A lot of people say that but I don’t see it,” I said.  “I suppose a lot of sleep and staying hydrated help.”

                She seemed to be at odds with herself then – wanting to ask me if I was being genuine or sarcastic with her.  She decided to drop the subject and moved onto another.

                “Peter is a wonderful child.  Very precocious.”

                I nodded.  The conversation we were having was only to fill the minutes until Bernice or Michael came.

                “What is it that you do?” she asked, and made an effort to smile this time. 

                “Sales.  Cleaning products.  And paper towels.  The folded sheet kind, not the rolls.”

                She didn’t know how to reply to that, short of saying “Good for You," so she nodded.  I suspect she'd already concluded I was a bad parent not to have realized my own son had skipped school for over a week and was just tolerating me at that point.

                “Will Peter be coming back soon?” she asked.

                Michael knocking on the door and letting himself in with Dr. Ginsburg’s coffee gave me time to think of an answer.  Michael was a young kid, probably a senior at the school.  After he put the mug down, he looked at me expectantly.  Dr. Ginsburg dismissed him, and he left.

                “Yes,” I said.  “We have many legal things to sort out.  I hadn’t expected him to be out of school a week early.”

                She took a sip of coffee.  “Oh? What did he tell you?”

                “Nothing,” I said.  “So I’m here to find out who made what call to the school to excuse him from classes.”

                She had the look again -- the desire to tell me the finer points of fatherhood and to emphasize that most parents know where their kids are at all times.  Instead, she drank her coffee and remained silent.

                “What is the usual process of taking my son out, if I should want him to be excused for more than a few days?”

                “Usually a phone call will do for a couple of days’ absence.  Kids get sick.  If it's for more than a week, we expect written follow up for any further nonattendance.  It isn't so much that we object to a child’s need to be with their family when it’s necessary, but absences can affect their grades.”

                “I see,” I said.

                “It's almost the end of the academic year,” Dr. Ginsburg continued.  “It would be unfair to keep Peter away from the coming exam month.  He may have to repeat the grade if he doesn’t come back soon.”

                “I understand.”

                “So when will he be returning?”

                “It’s out of my hands for now,” I said.  “I’m doing the best I can.”

                She nodded again, though she did very little to hide that she was unsatisfied with my answer.  At that point, I didn’t care very much what she thought.  I was waiting for Bernice to come and give me the answers I wanted so I could leave.

                Bernice came in a few minutes later with a manila folder stuffed with papers.  She gave me a smile, told me, "Good morning," and put the folder down on Dr. Ginsburg’s desk, next to her mug. 

                “These are the records for the last two weeks,” she said, opening the file. 

                “The first day he was listed as absent,” I said, “who called to say he wouldn't be coming in?”

                Bernice turned the folder to face her and flipped through some of the papers, pausing at one. “At seven sixteen,” she said, her eyes still on the entry, “a gentleman called.  He said he was the father.”

                “Did you take the call?”

                “Probably.  There are two of us who take calls until nine, after the attendance sheets are turned in by the homeroom teachers.  We call the parents whose children are a no-show that we haven't heard from.  For Peter...I can’t honestly say I remember this call, if I took it.  There’s just a note that a male parent called.”

                “So there was at least one call,” I said.

                Bernice flipped through the folder again, pulling out an envelope and giving it to me. “This came three days later,” she said.  “It was dropped off in the admin in-box.  No one really noticed who left it.  Mornings are a little hectic here.”

                The envelope with “Attention Attendance Office” scribbled on it, contained a handwritten letter asking that Pete be excused indefinitely for "personal family matters", authorized by Pete’s father.   The signature was illegible, though it didn’t matter, I doubted a real name had been used.

                All at once, I was annoyed and angry that someone could so easily walk into a school and take a child.  I wanted to ask them why the letter wasn’t cross-checked against Peter’s enrollment information.  Today, before even speaking to me, Dr. Ginsburg had pulled Leon’s number as Pete’s point of contact and made a point of calling him to confirm I was the person sitting in her office, when all I wanted was something simple;  yet a faceless person could come in and leave false information concerning Pete without anyone noticing for days.  The long bout of silence that followed in the office was visceral.  The women knew I was angry, but neither of them spoke.

                “May I take this letter?” I asked finally. 

                “Well – “ Bernice said.

                “Someone that isn’t me was able to send this school a letter that caused Peter's absence to be checked off as legitimate, so there would be no call-backs.  I’m not going to deal with the school’s failings right now,” I said, getting up.  I folded the note back into the envelope.  “I do need to find out who authored this letter.”

                “What are you going to do – “ Bernice started to ask.  Dr. Ginsburg held up her hand and interrupted her.

                “That’s fine,” she said.  “We understand your frustration.  It would seem that we may have made a mistake and failed Peter.  Please accept our apologies and let us know if we can further assist you.”  A practiced official with just the right thing to say to downplay a conflict by admitting fault.  There was nothing for them to gain by asserting a defense. 

                Enough tangible tension existed in the small office at that point that I wanted to leave and they wanted me gone.  Dr. Ginsburg stood up and offered her hand to me.  I shook it and told them to have a good day.

 

                I went to One Police Plaza from the school.  I'd called David to meet me out front, but instead, he told me to come up to his office.  After filling out a form and being issued a clip-on badge that simply said "VISITOR" to wear on my lapel, I went up ten floors to his section.

                Half the open cubicles were empty.  Whoever was left was either studiously buried in their paperwork or clustered in corners somewhere chatting.  The entire floor smelled of coffee.

                David’s office was at the end of the homicide section.  He was on the phone when I entered through the open door.  He pointed at one of the chairs in front of his desk.  Instead, I walked to the window and looked out.  He spoke for a few more minutes before finally hanging up.  I went over to the chair he had indicated and sat down.

                “I'm always delighted to see your pretty face,” he said.  “But I have absolutely nothing new to give you since last night.”

                I gave him the letter from the school. “Can you run a few more prints off this letter?”

                He carefully opened it and held the paper by its corners with his fingertips.  He read it and put it down on top of the envelope. “I know you pay taxes, but that doesn’t mean you literally pay my salary,” he said.  “I have other shit to do.”

                “Yes, investigate people who are already dead,” I said.  “The kid’s still alive.”

                “I'm after people who are alive and on the run after they leave bodies behind,” he clarified.  “That’s why we have a separate section called 'Missing Persons'.” 

                I smiled at him and told him about the brief morning visit at Pete’s school.  He laughed after I finished.

                “The principal must think you're the biggest asshole or the most unaware parent in the world,” he said.  “Kid didn’t show up for school for over a week; in their mind, he was probably playing video games at home and you didn’t even notice.”

                He got up, opened his door wider and called someone to him.  He waited there for a minute, then came back to his desk with a clear plastic bag that had "EVIDENCE" stamped on it.  He dropped the envelope and letter into it, sealed it, took it back to the door and handed it to the person waiting there.  He told them to fill out the paperwork, closed the door and sat back down behind his desk.

                “To be honest,” he said, “I used to call the school and announce myself tardy or sick on the days I wanted to cut classes.  They don’t check who calls in.  I’m quite sure I didn’t sound like an adult, but no one asked questions.  By regulation, they're only required to call the parents if there isn't notification of an absence before a certain cut-off time.”

                “That doesn’t help me,” I said. 

                “Anything else?” he asked.  “Nibble on your ear and whisper sweet nothings into it? I have all the time in the world, apparently.  Just got this job because I'm so goddamn cute.”

                “Another time,” I replied, getting up.  “I have a flight to San Diego in four hours.  I haven’t packed yet.”

                “I already called Smiley to expect you.  His contact information’s in the paperwork I gave you.”

                “What a cheerful name.”

                “He’s an irritable old cop who’s counting the days until he can retire and get away from ‘those fucking assholes’ at work,” he said.  “But he'll help you, especially when it comes to minors.  He has like, a thousand grandchildren.”

                I touched David on the cheek.  “When I come back I’ll strip down and flex my muscles for you -- and I don’t mean my arms.”

                He bit back a laugh and a reply.  I gave him a wink, thanked him and let myself out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This may be the last update to this short story for awhile (or at all) due to licensing details.
> 
> Notes: Lynch is about 24-25 years old in this story; having left his previous employment with the government over a year ago.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for the edits, Mycean! <3


End file.
